Brethren, we have made it through another presidential election. Our nation prepares for a new president and a new Congress to take office in a few months, whether we agree with them or not. Our first task, as Catholic citizens, is to pray for a good transition and for open minds and hearts among the new administration, so that our Church may flourish and God’s will may be done. We cannot give in to complacency and despair nor should we gloat. There is still a lot of work to be done to proclaim the joyful truth of the Gospel, and the election results must not intrude too greatly upon that work. But there is a second task that we must take up after such a bitter, divisive, emotionally-riddled election; a task which is not necessary merely because of this election, but which is necessary at all times because of our primary calling as Christians, as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Our readings today carry within them a very apocalyptic tone, far more so than any of the most dire predictions being put forward by the media types right now. These readings do not speak of arrests or policy reversals or hatred; they speak of destruction, death, and judgment. They remind us that this world will not endure forever, but that it indeed carries an expiration date. These readings remind us that we need to be oriented towards the true goal of every Christian: not political victory but eternal life. We must be focused upon the end of days.
Orientation carries with it an interesting meaning. Its root word in Latin means the East, which was the easiest direction for ancient people to know due to the rising sun. Whenever we speak of orientation, we usually mean the general direction in which something is travelling or pointing. If we are lost, we speak of reorienting ourselves so as to regain our true direction. Perhaps reorientation is appropriate to how we should be reflecting on these post-election days.
Brothers and sisters, we need to reorient our lives totally and completely to the Lord. We Americans love to play politics and elevate it to a quasi-religion, yet it causes us to lose our true center in God, in Jesus Christ. I do not discourage your political participation, for we are called to live our faith in church and in the public square, but we must keep Christ at the center of our lives, not politics or sports or anything else in this fleeting world. Just as Saint Paul discourages those Thessalonians from being overly concerned with the business of others, so too should we be discouraged from too great a concern on the temporal, the fleeting, the earthly. We must turn to the Lord, the Lord who will be coming very soon.
But how can we regain this spiritual orientation? How can we begin to turn to the Lord? We can begin to do this through returning to a practice that has accommodated the Church in her worship and her prayer from the very beginning. We can begin to reorient ourselves by making Christ the center of our worship. How can this be done? I propose to do this not merely in an interior sense, but in an exterior sense. My proposal is this: beginning on the First Sunday of Advent, we shall celebrate the liturgy here united together and physically turned towards the Lord.
Throughout the history of the Church, Christians have been united together in praying the Mass in a single direction. In fact, the direction usually taken in prayer was to the East, toward the symbol of the rising sun, reminding us of the sun of justice which we heard Malachi foretell in the first reading. The rising sun reminds us of the Lord who has risen from death and will return in the same way as He departed, east of Jerusalem. This idea of unity in posture among the sacred minister and the congregation is not restricted to the Christian religion alone: Muslims will turn to face Mecca while many pious Jews seek during prayer to orient their hearts if not their bodies towards Jerusalem and the east.
I wish us to undertake this united position of worship for a few reasons, the first of which I offer today. We Christians have become increasingly oriented towards the now, something which I believe this election highlights in an extreme way. We too often focus on the here and now, on what we can do here instead of remembering that we are called to be pilgrims on the journey to the eternal Promised Land. We often are like the ancient Israelites wandering through the desert who desire the comforts of Egypt rather than the far more glorious splendors that await the end of the journey. We have lost our true orientation.
But Jesus reminds us of this in our Gospel today when He first foretells the destruction of the physical Temple in Jerusalem, then the great calamities that shall occur at the end of days. The Lord desires to orient us not towards the current reality, which can change in a minute, but towards the eternal realities that shall endure forever. This month is normally dedicated towards a consideration of the last things as they are called: death, judgment, heaven and hell. But we Christians should have these things foremost in our minds: to be prepared for death, to fear being judged against Christ, to hope for heaven and to pray and work to avoid hell.
Our worship should reflect this eternal orientation by having us turn towards the Lord of history, by being watchful for the One who promises that He shall return from the same direction as when He first arrived in this world. Our worship should reinforce the true Christian orientation not towards the petty squabbles of politicians but to the Lord of all time and space, the Lord who shall endure forever, unlike all the nations of the earth. Our worship should have us truly living in the blessed hope of the coming of our Savior, when He shall return to judge the living and the dead and grant to all the faithful eternal life.
I ask for your patience as we begin this change, but I also ask for openness. We should not be afraid of our traditions, even those that we have forgotten, but we should seek the best from the old along with the new. Let us pray that we may be oriented towards Christ more and more each day, not only here in church but in the sum of our lives. Let our hearts become oriented to the true Savior of the nations, the only one who rules the earth with full justice, as we shall celebrate next week. Let us be the pilgrim people of God, journeying not for the fleeting pleasures of this world, but marching eastward, marching towards the Lord, towards the full glory and splendor that awaits the faithful in eternal life.
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